Generally speaking, a war is much too big for we normal people to wrap our heads around all at once. It is much simpler to focus on a few people in the battles. Best of all, skip over the main battles entirely and focus on things that a small group of heros could be doing effectively.
Assassinating/kidnapping enemy generals, raiding supply lines, collecting intelligence, scouting out enemy positions, destroying enemy factories and so on are all good things to focus on rather than the massive battles.
If you are dead set on describing a massive battle scene, then there are a few things to keep in mind.
Large battles between multiple opponents are NOT the same as duels between two people. Tactics and tricks that might win you the battle in a duel can lose you the war. One important thing about large scale low-tech skimishing is the importance of organised/team fighting. From the roman shield wall on up through the ages more trained/organised have always won out over less organized attack patterns. This generally means dodging or pursuing individual foes is out of the question, since you have nowhere to dodge to (if you dodge left or right your hitting and ally, if you dodge back you just opened a hole in your formation, same if you heedlessly rush out away form the formation).
Speculating on the effects that superhuman martial arts, magic, psychic powers, demons, dragons and other things might have on mass combat is a topic covered by a lot of novels, but few of them well. You'll have to think a lot about this and decide what kind of effect you are going for.
If you really want an epic duel to the death between opposing champions in the middle of a raging warzone, then go for it. The hundreds or thousands of people fighting back and forth around your two charaters is nothing more than scenery at that point, no more important than the trees or the local broke. Use them as fodder for cool stunts, interesting visual florishs and be done with it. If your two dueling heros are sufficiently powerful, the result of the war around them will hardly matter.
If you want something grittier, then war is a harsh and unforgiving place. In a large battle any character could die from a random arrow, sword stroke or piece of shrapnel. This can be inconvenient for your story, so that is why you should have important characters avoid massive battles.
Now there is, of course, a scale of massive battles. A war between hundreds of soldiers is one thing, and a duel between two martial artists is another, but there is space in between them.
A small unit fight (between groups of say, three to five people a peice) can be handled in a fight scene without it getting too confusing. Depending on what you are going for and the tactics involved you can just pair the good guys and bad guys off into individual duels, or you can have them constantly shift and change opponents. Your biggest problem will be keeping track of where everyone is, not only in your own mind, but in a way in which the reader can understand.
Don't be afraid, in such a case, to shift backward and forward in time. If neccesary tell about a series of events from one character's perspective, then shift back and tell the same events from another character's. Then shift location and tell about what was happening at the same time, but in a different place.
Try not to focus on any one part of the battle for too long. Keep your scenes relatively short and to the point, then move on to a different part of the battle. You want to make sure the reader doesn't forget what was happening in previous scenes, so don't linger too much on any one area lest they do so.
With that in mind, remember that each scene should be a scene. It should have a start, middle and end. Think to yourself, "What do I need to accomplish in this scene?" and try to focus on doing just that. Avoid simply 'touching base', instead make every scene something pivotal and important to the fight in general. Something should happen in every scene. Do this right, and arrange your scenes correctly and your reader will think you are deftly tying together many different scenes into one coherent whole. Do it poorly, and you will create an awful mess.
All this being said, fight scenes with multiple participants are more difficult to write, technically speaking, than duels. But they are just scenes. A lot of people will be satisfied by simply having a series of epic duels. Its worked for... just about every fighting anime ever made, after all.
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Epsilon
Assassinating/kidnapping enemy generals, raiding supply lines, collecting intelligence, scouting out enemy positions, destroying enemy factories and so on are all good things to focus on rather than the massive battles.
If you are dead set on describing a massive battle scene, then there are a few things to keep in mind.
Large battles between multiple opponents are NOT the same as duels between two people. Tactics and tricks that might win you the battle in a duel can lose you the war. One important thing about large scale low-tech skimishing is the importance of organised/team fighting. From the roman shield wall on up through the ages more trained/organised have always won out over less organized attack patterns. This generally means dodging or pursuing individual foes is out of the question, since you have nowhere to dodge to (if you dodge left or right your hitting and ally, if you dodge back you just opened a hole in your formation, same if you heedlessly rush out away form the formation).
Speculating on the effects that superhuman martial arts, magic, psychic powers, demons, dragons and other things might have on mass combat is a topic covered by a lot of novels, but few of them well. You'll have to think a lot about this and decide what kind of effect you are going for.
If you really want an epic duel to the death between opposing champions in the middle of a raging warzone, then go for it. The hundreds or thousands of people fighting back and forth around your two charaters is nothing more than scenery at that point, no more important than the trees or the local broke. Use them as fodder for cool stunts, interesting visual florishs and be done with it. If your two dueling heros are sufficiently powerful, the result of the war around them will hardly matter.
If you want something grittier, then war is a harsh and unforgiving place. In a large battle any character could die from a random arrow, sword stroke or piece of shrapnel. This can be inconvenient for your story, so that is why you should have important characters avoid massive battles.
Now there is, of course, a scale of massive battles. A war between hundreds of soldiers is one thing, and a duel between two martial artists is another, but there is space in between them.
A small unit fight (between groups of say, three to five people a peice) can be handled in a fight scene without it getting too confusing. Depending on what you are going for and the tactics involved you can just pair the good guys and bad guys off into individual duels, or you can have them constantly shift and change opponents. Your biggest problem will be keeping track of where everyone is, not only in your own mind, but in a way in which the reader can understand.
Don't be afraid, in such a case, to shift backward and forward in time. If neccesary tell about a series of events from one character's perspective, then shift back and tell the same events from another character's. Then shift location and tell about what was happening at the same time, but in a different place.
Try not to focus on any one part of the battle for too long. Keep your scenes relatively short and to the point, then move on to a different part of the battle. You want to make sure the reader doesn't forget what was happening in previous scenes, so don't linger too much on any one area lest they do so.
With that in mind, remember that each scene should be a scene. It should have a start, middle and end. Think to yourself, "What do I need to accomplish in this scene?" and try to focus on doing just that. Avoid simply 'touching base', instead make every scene something pivotal and important to the fight in general. Something should happen in every scene. Do this right, and arrange your scenes correctly and your reader will think you are deftly tying together many different scenes into one coherent whole. Do it poorly, and you will create an awful mess.
All this being said, fight scenes with multiple participants are more difficult to write, technically speaking, than duels. But they are just scenes. A lot of people will be satisfied by simply having a series of epic duels. Its worked for... just about every fighting anime ever made, after all.
--------------------
Epsilon